Expanding Feet
Charlene Bartholomae (charle@tpc.tulane.edu)
Fri, 29 Nov 1996 16:19:21 -0500
Well, I finally figured I might as well jump in and learn something more.
I have a 7yo Arab mare, and a farrier I love.
I would like some feedback from all of you who I KNOW are much more experienced
than I. This mare has good feet. As long as I keep her stalled at night,
have never had
any problems with shoes coming off or anything like that. My farrier puts
trailers on
all 4 feet and squares the toes. She only can be heard to click at about
4-1/2 to 5 weeks
into a shoeing, or when she is not carrying herself properly.
The odd thing (to me) is that after shoeing her for awhile (this
farrier has been doing
my horses for 8 years, and this horse in particular for 3 years, since I got
her)---the farrier
and I both discovered that her feet SPREAD a lot as they grow. In order to
keep her feet from growing over the edges of the shoes at 3 weeks, he has to
really leave a lot of shoe
on the edges of her feet...so much, infact, that I have to keep bell boots
on her front feet
all the time when she is in the pasture. At first, he was just leaving a
little outside the
edges of her hooves, as he did with the previous horse I had. After a few
shoeings, however,
we figured out that this wasn't enough w/this mare. During the winter
months, it seems
to slow some (as the hoof growth seems to), but in the warmer months (here
is Louisiana
most of the months are warm), he has to leave "a hell of a lot of iron" on
the outside of
her foot to "grow into her shoes".
DO ANY OF YOU DEAL WITH THIS SAME TYPE OF THING????
Charlene B.
,
/,`\
` | \____\\
_( ) \ Charlene Bartholomae
\-\~~~_|\ \ Department of Pathology
` \ ` \ ` Tulane Regional Primate Research Center
18703 Three Rivers Road.
` ` Covington, Louisiana 70433
e-mail: charle@tpc.tulane.edu
_